University at Buffalo Partners with Erie Niagara Area Health Care Education Center to Host Summer Camp for High School Students

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“The ability to create a partnership with SPHHP provides our students with high quality educational opportunities with a renowned institution, which is in line with the charge that our funders have tasked all AHECs. ENAHEC is fortunate to have strong partnerships such as this.”

The University at Buffalo School of Public Health and Health Professions (SPHHP), along with the Erie Niagara Area Health Education Center (ENAHEC), will host a summer camp to provide high school students the chance to learn more about public health, and to explore both college and career choices in public health and health professions.

This year’s free, week-long camp will take place August 14-18, 2017 at the University at Buffalo and will offer students the opportunity to learn about a wide-range of topics through multiple sessions.

“This is the second consecutive year that we are hosting the summer camp and we couldn’t be more excited,” says Mr. Robert Furlani, assistant director of MPH training at SPHHP and one of the event’s organizers. “Above all else, we want the camp to be fun, so we have the students participate in a number of hands-on activities throughout the week, which provides for a unique learning experience.”

Some of those hands-on activities include conducting mock lead screenings while wearing Tyvek suits, using black lights while learning about germs, use of air monitors for measuring air quality, and conducting building accessibility screenings while using wheelchairs. While attendees will learn more about public health through these hands-on activities, the opportunity for attendees to understand the complexity of public health and to create a well-informed, and diverse health care workforce moving forward will also be present.

This is where the Erie Niagara Area Health Education Center comes in to play.

As a federally funded initiative, ENAHEC is focused on increasing diversity by recruiting and training people of all races and ethnicities for careers in health care.

“For us to partner with the University at Buffalo to host this summer camp was the perfect fit,” says Ms. Danise Wilson, executive director of ENAHEC, one of nine AHEC’s in the NYS AHEC System. “The ability to create a partnership with SPHHP provides our students with high quality educational opportunities with a renowned institution, which is in line with the charge that our funders have tasked all AHECs. ENAHEC is fortunate to have strong partnerships such as this.”

Ultimately, camp organizers hope that attending students will view public health as a viable career option and can take what they’ve learned to implement change in their local communities.

“As potential future public health professionals, these students would have great insight on how to create and implement change within their own communities so it is imperative that the community based agencies and higher learning institutions continue to feed and invest in the public health pipeline to produces the best workforce of the future,” says Wilson.

The University at Buffalo School of Public Health and Health Professions offers undergraduate and graduate degree level programs and is the home to five departments; Biostatistics, Community Health and Health Behavior, Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Epidemiology and Environmental Health and Rehabilitation Science. It is one of only a few schools across the country that includes health-related professions as an integral component of the public health educational and research system. SPHHP is located on the South Campus of University at Buffalo in Kimball Tower. For more information about the school, visit www.sphhp.buffalo.edu.

Erie Niagara Area Health Care Education Center (ENAHEC), is one of nine local AHEC’s in the NYS AHEC System. ENAHEC was formed in September 2003 to serve Erie and Niagara counties and is dedicated to creating a well informed and diverse health care workforce. For more information about ENAHEC, visit www.erieniagaraahec.org.